imagine the invention of the washing machine. you are living in a suburban street, spending many hours of the week washing your family's clothes by hand. now here comes this shiny and colourful commercial telling of the magic solution to your hard toil. all of your neighbours already have one, but you haven't been able to afford it. they keep reminding you how wonderful it is, and why did you not have one yet. you feel inferior. you NEED one. and as soon as you finally have it, as soon as you have matched your street's standard, the lawn mower is invented.
it's a never ending vicious circle of using up resources, overspending our due to the cost of some anonymous stranger, and separation for fear of losing whatever we seem to possess to the other.
in a world where material success is valued higher than love, laughter and compassion, we learn early on that when we buy this or achieve that we will be happy. only to find that the sense of satisfaction upon reaching what we desire is short lived and leaves us feeling more empty than before. and so we strive. on and on, forever chasing that elusive thing called happiness.
the things we need grow bigger. soon, even a Ferrari or a Million Followers aren't enough anymore, we need more. we NEED. anything. we are so overloaded with sensations, our skin has grown tough, and feelings have a hard time reaching us. only the craziest of adventures, the biggest feats, the most expensive objects or the strongest drugs are able to register. everything less bounces off. and we become ever more miserable.
but what if we had been sold a wrong image all along? what if the things we focused our lives around were just things that made other people rich and powerful and we had been misled into believing they would make us happy because others were out to profit from us?
we were never meant to make material things, status, power or competition our highest values. I believe all creatures on this planet and everywhere beyond are whole and equal and wish with all their heart to avoid suffering. suffering hurts. no one wants to hurt. we were meant to be happy. we were meant to be free. true human qualities are the ones that can never and will never be replaced by any kind of computer. they are the very core of what makes us us. understanding. compassion. mutual support. cooperation and interdependence. creativity. sharing. trust. we should listen inside ourselves. there, if we listen closely, we can still hear the song of the wild. telling us that what is truly important may be entirely different from what we have been made to believe.
it is time.
time to be wild.
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